2019-10-10 - Shotgun Wounds and Wedding Plans

It is a good five...ten minutes. Or two cigarettes later, that Frankie's response comes....

Greg doesn't want to break the moment; it's nice, somehow, out here in the shitty weather. So he just sort of wanders around, pacing idly and chain smoking while getting very slowly soaked to the bone. He alternates checking his phone every five seconds with peering curiously at just anything and everything his eyes might happen upon. Ooh, pretty moon. Look at that rock over there! And so on. Then the moment comes when he checks the phone again, frowning at its lack of notifications, before putting it in his pocket... just in time for it to vibrate. He snatches it back out with alacrity.

The length of time it takes between her first response, and her second is much reduced, thankfully. Because delaying back hair jokes makes them far less humorous.

It is not five minutes. It is not three minutes. It is just under a minute, in all reality, when Greg drops in to pick Frankie up. Drops in, from the sky, on a skateboard. Because a girl -- THE girl -- is watching, he fails his landing , and tumbles ass-backwards off the board just after it touches the ground. It rolls slowly away from him, carried by forward momentum, while he sits in a puddle.

Very slowly, Greg turns from glaring at the board to looking up at Frankie. His smile (her smile?) blooms anew, and he giggles softly. "That literally almost never happens."

There is zero panic and freak-outs happening about the fact he ends up dumped off his skateboard, she moves to stop the boards rolling with a foot being held out to catch it. Like he requested, she is dressed warmly in a pair of jeans, fuzzy boots, and a flannel shirt with her hair up in a ponytail. She did not opt for a coat, or even a hoodie, which might actually be a bad idea on her part.

"You know...I've heard that before." Frankie offers, glancing at the board to make sure that it doesn't go anywhere before she moves to reach a hand down to offer it to him, "You want to try your superhero landing again? I'll wait. I need to be impressed, though...because otherwise I'm just going to go back inside."

Greg looks at Frankie's hand for a long moment with a sour expression. This is not quite unfolding the way the he imagined it. He takes her hand at length, letting her help him back to his feet.

"Ugh. My ass is soaked," he bitches, looking around at the damage. "Motherfucking dipshit," he accuses himself bitterly. He shakes his head, snorting, and then looks back around to Frankie. "Hey gorgeous! You look great." There is a slight hesitation, a moment of calculation, before Greg does in fact reach out a hand and slap that ass. Lightly and with affection, but he does it, and if he's done the math wrong here... by all the gods of men, let it not be so.

He grins at her dig, rubbing at the back of his neck awkwardly. "...yeah, you saw that? I totally did that on purpose. I know you value humor." He seems to be determined to go on here in a better vein than he started with, because he composes himself and returns a stern, commanding glare to the skateboard. It bends to his will, rolling back to find his feet as he steps up onto it. Now it's his turn to hold out a hand to Frankie, and he gives a cheeky grin. "Date two?"

That sour look, that has probably this very (un?)expected reaction to it, and Frankie's expression crumbles for all of five seconds. It's clear that she wasn't actually meaning it, perhaps, to come across the way that it did. Maybe? But she shores up the cracks in that wall like a boss, no one'll ever notice that she's rethinking her dry humor and wondering if she did her own miscalculations.

Is it over already? Have they hit the end of the potentially train wreck relationship already?

The ass slap could be a horrible miscalculation, but there's no slap coming from it, so it is clearly not. Or not bad enough. "I saw it..." She offers, a split second of apology there. Then she reaches out to take the hand when he holds it out to her, curling her fingers around it before she steps in towards him, "Are we going to get our matching MLP tattoos, now?"

The moment he has that hand in his, Greg draws Frankie close, wrapping his other arm around her. He tugs gently for the release of his hand, so he can wrap that around her too, and his feet probe around to check the set of hers and the feel of their combined balance on the board. That settled, he checks his grip -- twice -- and the board starts to slowly but steadily float upwards.

Greg keeps his peace and his concentration for a brief time while the road outside Frankie's place shrinks and recedes, becoming a vista of a growing slice of Gray Harbor. "So... this is the sky," he finally says, in a tone of quiet awe. Awe, and no little distraction, as he keeps the majority of his focus on what he's doing. The board continues to rise lazily, very slowly drifting through the air.

"I've got some leftover Chinese food at the house. I thought it might tide us over until our new family gets here to cook for us. If it's okay, I'd like to just sit and chill and talk. I want to know you better."

There are many, many things that Frankie can be casual about, but flying ain't one. When they do start to float she grabs him, her arms moving to wrap around hs neck to secure herself even further. One of them is going to have to let go for things to be complicated, and both for her to tumble to her doom and go splat against the ground beneath them.

"Um, ok." Frankie nods in agreement with things, mostly the suggestion that there is left over Chinese food, because that is what catches her attention first. It's safe. Easy, evidently. It's the rest, though.

Talking. The horror. She then nods, glancing once downwards before she looks back up to the sky, "Greg..."

"Yeah babe?" Greg asks lightly. Otherwise he keeps his concentration on keeping the two of them alive. A rising sense of anxiety -- what if she falls! -- compels him to direct the board just a shade faster, begin a much more gradual and tapered descent as he steers toward home. The dark green blur below begins to resolve into trees, and beyond, trailers. He's almost shaking from how hard he's holding onto her. "Hold tight," he says tensely.

Shaking is probably not comforting, but she holds on tighter, her eyes falling once more to notice that those trees are getting a whole lot closer, and the trailers are becoming visible. Perhaps to help him out she takes a deep breath and holds it, her fingers gripping at his shoulders as she holds still. Movement is distracting, right? More so than the mere fact that she's trying to repeat his attempt the other day of pressing herself in against him to try and slide past his skin to occupy the same space.

That way she's easier to hold onto, right?

It only takes a few moments more until Greg eases the board gently to the ground behind his trailer, and at last he heaves a pretty enormous sigh of relief. "You know, I think maybe next time we should try something a little harder to fall off," he observes. The light rain begins to pick up, and he shields her from the rain as best he can as he guides her around to the porch and beyond, into the trailer, leaving the skateboard behind.

Within, he turns on every light switch. If the homies don't like it they can pay rent somewhere. He turns up the thermostat to a brisk 76 degrees and strips his soaked sweatshirt off, throwing it on the floor. It lands near the trash can, which is probably where it belongs, really. In the bright light of the kitchen, a jagged and angry red scar stands out on his upper left arm, poorly-healed, where something cut an uneven furrow not too long ago. He rubs at it absentmindedly while he crosses to the fridge where he starts hauling out little white paper containers.

"Cold or warm?"

Rain. It's always raining, isn't it?

Whatever good work she did on getting her hair washed, and style (it isn't really styled) has been ruined by this rain, and the wind of the trip, so while he turns on all the lights and gets his wet sweatshirt off she is reaching up to pull her ponytail down, trying to get it combed out with her fingers before she answers, "Cold."

Then she gives up, and just twists her hair back from her face into a bun, quickly wrapping the hair band around it. Note: No blue shoes. But with hair dealt with she pushes her shoes off with her toes, then starts to unbutton her wet flannel shirt, attention on at least getting out of what wet clothes and things she can without consciously thinking about the fact that unlike her, he doesn't live alone, and this could be super awkward. The wet flannel gets quickly pulled off, then she looks up, noting the scar and giving it a curious look, "I didn't notice that before....what happened?"

Greg places the containers on the kitchen table, adds two plates and a pile of silverware, and starts portioning it out by just dividing all of it in half. He makes a big mess due to the fact that he keeps sneaking peeks at Frankie. Then he question comes, and he looks at her.

There's a moment of consideration, and he's weighing a number of factors. It last about two heartbeats, and then he sits down at the table. Settling back in his chair, he starts to talk, looking down at the table. "Another guy that works for Monaghan had an idea to hit up this pharmaceutical distributor out at Elma. So... we did.'' He shrugs lightly. "It was going really good until these goons showed up in a security car. I... I really don't think those homies were legit security. They look like criminals to me, and it takes one to know one."

He looks down at his arm, frowning. "I was in the middle of picking a lock when the first one opened fire. He missed me with his first shot, but he got me the second time." Now his pause is longer, and he looks for Frankie's eyes before he continues. "I killed two of those dudes." He reaches up to rub at the back of his neck. "I didn't really have a choice. They shot at us first, and it was kill or be killed." His voice takes on a pleading tone, because this is the part where she realizes 'woah crazy dangerous drug dealer' and runs like hell.

Is it? Frankie isn't running. She doesn't even seem like she considered the possibility of running, which might give him a lot more insight into her own crazy. Usually people do freak out about things, and run away, or start calling the cops. Especially when murder is mentioned.

Not Frankie. She just stares at him, reaching for her fork to pick it up, then she turns her attention towards starting to eat the cold Chinese food, because much like pizza, Chinese food is actually really good cold, and she did ask for it. Plus, it'll tide her over until their new Chinese family gets there. "Did Monaghan sanction this move?" Which is where she gets worried, not about the dead bodies in Elma, or that he might be a crazy murdering drug dealer that now knows where she lives. But that Felix might be on the hunt for getting Greg, and whoever this other guy is, for doing something without his say so.

Then she stops, leaning back from him, the table, her delicious Chinese food, so that she can stare at him, then at his arm, "Was someone with you that could heal it?"

"Yeah, he knew about it. He got a taste." Greg shrugs, slowly grinning. "But it was our enterprise, our take, me and these other dudes. Other than getting my arm sliced open by a shotgun shell, it ended up pretty good. I made good money on it."

He takes up his fork and starts to dig in, because it's getting warm. "Uhh... no," he admits. "I dunno. I just kinda kept it clean and covered for a couple of weeks and it seems like it healed okay." Narrator: it did not seem like it healed okay. He rubs at it again with the back side of his hand, still wielding his fork. "How was your day, gorgeous?" he asks in an attempt to change topics. "Run any good grifts?" He flashes his very best dimply smile at her before cramming his mouth full of food. The Chinese will be hard-pressed to keep up.

"I'm going with you next time, then." Frankie is not the most skilled individual when it comes to healing, not by a mile. But she's good for most things short of broken bones, and she knows it. Not that he knows it, she doesn't think. She scoops up a bite of the food again, then shoves it into her mouth before she sets the fork down on the edge of her plate, leaning forward to rest her forearms on the table, watching him.

"Off season, so I had one regular come in...she wanted to pick up a few more healing crystals, said the ones she got were so amazing, her headaches were almost all gone, and she wanted to pick up some for friends and family." She doesn't seem to be willing to argue with her earlier statement, so settles on this portion of the conversation, her chin settling onto her hands, "So beyond that? Quiet. I was able to finish three whole crossword puzzles, paint my nails, reorganize the books on the shelf behind the counter, and wash my hair."

"Wow," Greg says with an impressed look. "That's a pretty productive day." He scoops up his plate, the better to shovel food down his gullet. "I sold lots of drugs," he says conversationally. "Even some legal ones. The store had a pretty good take today." Hey, small talk over dinner. How normal. At midnight.

He looks over at Frankie like he wants to say something... then doesn't. Then thinks better of thinking better of it, and being a Greg, opens his mouth. "I kept having this little daydream all day." He shoots a hooded, shy look her way. "I bought all our debt off from Monaghan, yours and mine, and I got out of the game and just did legitimate business, and we didn't have to sweat shit and be afraid about anything but the apparently very fuckin' real monsters." He shovels his mouth full of food, watching her carefully.

"What do you think about a daydream like that?"

"How much is your debt to him?"

This is important, probably as important as knowing what her debt to him is. Which at this point, she may not even know what the actual amount is any more. She was practically still a kid when she started helping to pay it. It's not her house, she doesn't have rights here. Kitchen rights, at least. She's got the right to sit there and eat what he's handed her, but that doesn't stop her from getting to her feet, moving towards the fridge to start hunting around in it for....something. Potentially just to buy time.

"I told you...my dad was an Addington." She says this super carefully, then remembers that he might not know what that means. "They are one of the fancy rich families in town...founding families. I inherited money. A lot of money."

If Greg would agree with Frankie's belief that it isn't her house or that she doesn't have kitchen rights... well, he wouldn't. He just wouldn't agree. And so he sits there blithely, stuffing his face, while Frankie roots around in the fridge. "I would be careful. I think Daisy cleans that thing out sometimes, but the poor girl can only do so much." He chews on his food, and his thoughts, for a moment.

"You know, I guess I'm not real sure what he considers that I owe him. He didn't exactly give me an invoice for the coke. He's made it out of me; he must think so too, or he never would've put up the money for Green Harbor. Now, that... I've paid some, I owe some. I'm not sure, but I bet money people know a way where I could pay him all off and owe a bank instead. I'd rather owe a bank than snort my dick when I'm just starting to get some meaningful use out of it.

He swallows loudly when she mentions all this money. "Is that right?" he asks carefully. Somewhere in the lizard brain that drives the Greg, he senses a Danger here, a vague and lurking, insidious Danger that must be avoided at all costs, lest the mistress be displeased and withdraw her favor. "You know I didn't know that," he says even more carefully. "Right? But if that's the case, then it's your karmic makeup for the fucked up life he dealt you. Yours." That last word is delivered as firmly as he dares, which is to say just slightly above a polite request.

"Yeah...I don't remember the exact amount. Lawyers are evidently still in probate, or something." She probably could speed things up, maybe. Or at least be more concerned about it speeding up. But some part of her, well. She just isn't in that big of a hurry for things to be resolved. The warning about things in the fridge is at least taken at face value, and she closes the door before leaning against it, her arms folding across her stomach as she gives him a serious look, "But, it is in the low six figures area."

Which means that she can probably pay of Felix herself, unless she somehow owes him a whole lot of money. More than would be accounted for by a loan and even the craziest interest, short of something really crazy.

"I don't think owing him the money is why...he makes people do what they do. I think that once you're hooked in, you're a commodity. A piece on the chess board. You? You know things, Greg. You now how his drug business works, you know who works for him. You know which cops are dirty, which ones are dirty for him." She assumes he does, at least. It seems reasonable that he would. "Paying him off....I don't think that is going to make this stop. We're in this forever. You probably more than me, because I don't know anything. Just that mom owed him."

She pushes away from the fridge, moving back over to where he's sitting, dropping herself to her knees in front of him, leaning in to rest her cheek against his leg, "Ask him, instead, to transition out of the street business. That it risks his legitimate income if you get busted selling coke...See what he does."

Greg turns to watch Frankie while she talks, leaned against the fridge, and it's such a serious topic that he barely molests her with his eyes at all. Well, somewhat. At the end of her explanation, he wears a dark frown.

"....fuck," he finally says, watching her as she walks back over. "See, this is why I need you. You're a lot smarter than me. You should probably do all my thinking from now on." He smiles down at her, and reaches down to tangle his fingers in her hair. "I could shoot him," he offers, but without conviction. "Probably wouldn't work out very good. The problem is he needs somebody to move the shit, period." He looks around the trailer, towards the hall that leads to the small bedrooms, and lowers his voice to just above a whisper.

"Sometimes I think I'm not cut out for this shit. My heart ain't always in the right place to do the smart thing. The next smart thing that I should do is get the family doing the deals. Then they're on the line and I sit back safe." He looks back down at her. "I don't know if I can put my people out there like that."

"It'd lead back to you, either way. They live here, they have connections with you...you need to network with people you're not...family with." Frankie shakes her head at him, a hand reaching up to slide her finger over the angry red scar on his arm. "Or just get right with this idea that you'll be working with him forever."

Which, weirdly, doesn't seem to bring up any more worry than everything else. Which is to say not really any at all. It's all academics to her, until she sees someone get shot, probably. "You're..pretty safe, right? Felix seems to have people on his pay roll that if you got arrested, I bet that you'd get off on a technicality. You're more at risk from this..." She taps her fingertip against his arm, over that scar. That is more dangerous, and that she knows isn't avoidable, either.

"Your heart is in the right place, to do the right thing." She gets herself to her feet, though, brushing his hand away from her hair before dropping herself into his lap, an arm wrapping around his shoulders, "You also don't need to try and take care of my debt, and I don't want you doing something crazy over it...and like...Confronting him. Okay? Just...leave it be."

Greg winces and twitches away from Frankie's touch to the scar. Yep, healed fine! His expression grows glum at the reasonable and logical suggestion that he stop railing against fate.

Her next question makes him think. "I'm safe-adjacent, I guess," he admits. "Anybody on his payroll should leave me alone. Anybody on my payroll should too." He eyeshifts with a little grin. "I pay my money to do my business at the shop and be left alone too. So I try to do most of my work there, where my money and his money should be working together to make me snug as a bug in a rug." He chews his lip. "And I guess I wasn't really on Monaghan's business the only time I've had to bust caps." Yes, he did just use that expression unironically! Cool boyfriend material, Frankie.

He takes her into his lap happily, and at this close range he has a clear and visible struggle to not ogle her like a pervert despite his best intentions, but the last thing she says makes him start visibly. "What makes you think I was going to do something like that?" he asks, having fully been planning to do that exact thing.

"I'm psychic."

Speaking of saying things unironically. Frankie seems to accept that she has the best boyfriend, if for no other reason that he's hers, and that puts him miles above all the rest. Miles. Whole. Fucking. Miles.

"So....just, work. And don't worry." She reaches a hand up to his hair, tucking one corner behind his ear, very much like a role reversal of the classing movies, or just a different movie. Who knows, who cares? "You're going to be fine, you'll get ahead in business, you'll make money, and you can take care of your family. You want that, right?" She leans in to rest her forehead against his, then she gives him a quick kiss, "Until I sacrifice you for my own ends. But I won't put you into the animal sacrifice hole."

"I'm a people," Greg insists, but weakly. Secretly, deep down, he knows it's the pit full of animal corpses for him. He closes his eyes and presses into the head to head contact, hugging her tight. "I love you," he says quietly.

He cracks an eye open, peering at her. "And I love your optimism, but I just don't like having to trust that Felix is going to keep being cool." From his expression, it's a problem he's going to keep working on. But later. For now, he traces the tips of his fingers from the nape of her neck down to the hollow of her back, with a little tickle at the end. "I will take care of my family," he states. "Starting with you. What do you think, gorgeous? Want to head back to the bedroom?" He leans out to the side, looking down at the puddle pooling under his chair.

"Maybe a shower first."

"Are you sure you're a people?" Frankie just has to know, and her expression looks very dubious about his status as a people. "You're crazy."

"My optimism? You mistake me, good sir. I'm a realist. As long as everyone toes the party line, does what they are supposed to, and what Felix wants....he'll be cool. That's just how it works." It's optimism. A lot of it, and no matter how hard she tries to dress it up as realism it just won't ever actually be that, no matter how many times she says it, or wishes for it to be that. Optimism is just too much positivism.

There is a look down at the dropping water puddling on the floor beneath his chair, then she shakes her head, "But I like sitting here with you while you get sick from being wet and cold." She starts to her feet, though, her hand reaching behind her to catch his hand where he's trying to tickle her, "Am I family now?" She slides her fingers through his, turning around towards him, tucking that hand against her back as she waits for him to get to his feet as well. "You looking to make an honest woman out of me? Two point five kids, white picket fence? I demand diamonds, white dress with floral arrangements so expensive that it'll make you weep."

Greg makes a gross squishing sound as he gets up off chair, one that his shoes repeat with every step he takes. Which isn't many, because Frankie takes the conversation twisting down a new alley, and Greg stops in his tracks to peer at her. As per usually one can almost see the steam come out of his ears as his brain tries to work things out.

"I... uhh.... Hmm," he says, quite clever. He pokes a finger at her belly. "You're fucking with me, right?" Surely it must be so, his body language says. "You would run to get Gina and drown me in the animal pit if I actually asked you to... uh, asked you that." Yes, it's easy to see how Frankie would fall for a charmer like that. "Don't you think that half a kid is going to have some problems in life? I feel like we'd be more responsible to either stop at two or go for the full three."

He is looking at her in a pretty fucking odd way right now, though, as it begins to dawn -- really dawn -- on him what all relationships tend to lead to. Now marriages and children are bouncing around in his imagination. Well done, Frankie!

It is possible that she'd bury him with the animals, or drown him. Potentially do all kinds of terrible serial killer kinds of things to him, because this is the status of their relationship, isn't it? That was fairly well established early on, before there even was a relationship. Maybe it was after? Hard to keep track in the whirl wind that this entire thing is.

"Am I?"

IS SHE? She might might very well be fucking with him, it's a good bet that she's just fucking with him. But she's not going to say that she is, because that is counter to who she is, and how she handles life. Also, now she's committed to this, and will likely ride this ride until the wheels fall off. "I would agree that half a kid seems problematic, like....which half? Is it a top or a bottom, or a left or a right?"

But that odd look. It's enough that she almost, almost back tracks on everything, joke, serious, or not. But instead just continues, doubling down by adding, "I like fall, could do a zombie theme." Then she's heading for the hallway to go in search of the bathroom, which means that doors are about to be dangerously opened. Regardless of what horrors might be on the other side of them.

Greg's all ready for the zombie-themed wedding. With his slack jaw, he needs only to shuffle at someone to really nail the brainless undead look. Somewhere in the middle of trying to figure out up from down, he notices Frankie headed off to rouse the homies and hurries to intercede.

He gives little tug on her hand and points back towards the back of the trailer, where a short private hallway leads to a closed door. "I'm this way," he tells her, reaching out to open it. "Use the shared bathroom at your own risk. I don't even want to think about the things that might be in there. I've got a private one in here." He seems pretty happy to leave his and Frankie's dirty plates and soggy shirts behind for someone else to deal with as he leads the way in...

...and stops in the doorway, turning around. A smile slowly plays across his features as he drops himself to one knee, looking up at her. He gives a little shrug, as if to tell both her and himself 'Yep, this is really happening'. "Frankie?" he asks, looking up at her, and that smile twitches. But those eyes are serious and deep. He pauses here, gathering his thoughts, and this might be a great time for her to intervene if she doesn't want him to keep going. He sure looks like he's going to keep going and say some things!

Lucky for the roommates that he catches her attention, and stops her from banging open doors and scaring the shit out of everyone. Also, there is gratefulness for the warning about the shared bathroom, and a slightly horrified look at it as well.

But whatever horrible things she's imagining growing in the bathroom are forgotten when he stops in the door way, and she comes to an abrupt halt, nearly running into him before she takes a half step back so that she can look down at him. "Greg?" Oh, god. There is a very conflicted look, because she is pretty sure that this is how they've ended up in the situation they are in in the first place. Someone says something, and then it becomes officially official without the logic and reality being involved in things. So does she stop him? Does she bask in the fucked up glory that is probably the only proposal she'll ever get in her entire life?

It would make things easier when it came time to mount him on her wall.

Greg waits just long enough to tip his hat that he probably expected her to make another joke, or slap him in the face, or the ever popular 'run screaming' option. None of these things happen, so Greg glances down for a second, composes his thoughts, and looks back up at Frankie, drawing a deep breath. Because this is his part of the schtick, it's reasonably certain the joke is about to become the framing for over-eager earnesty.

"Frankie," he starts again, because 'You' or 'Woman' seem like impersonal choices. Those impossibly deep brown eyes open up as far as they can go. "I've never met anybody like you in my life. You make me laugh and smile and want to be a better person." He starts to build confidence and conviction as he rolls on here. "I didn't know who I was until I met you, and you walked into my life like a light turning on. I don't ever want to be in the dark again. I don't know how I got through the days, before I met you, but I can't get through one now without you. I didn't really plan this moment right now or I'd be holding a ring that would make your panties wet and girlfriends cry, but maybe you can have more fun picking one out together for our third date." It's even better than tattoos.

"Frankie... Francisca Dubois." He flashes his very bestest, limited stock, reserved for this occasion only full-wattage smile. "Will you please marry me?"

This is when she should run, right? Or five minutes ago? Probably that first night when the spontaneous 'I love you' happened. Smart people, once more, would have slapped a restraining order on him the first time, but nope. She's not gone yet. Probably just proves that his telling her that she was the smart one earlier was just the wrong thing to say, because she's obviously not smart. Not smart at all.

"Um."

It's not the best way to start out with answers to this, is it?

Greg is, at least, not left hanging for long, because there are a lot of things that happen all at once. One, there was that um, then there is this look that just screams 'You're crazy!!'. But then she just nods. A nod is an answer, right? It's a yes. Just without the words, plus, she's still standing there instead of running away screaming about how crazy he actually is. Although, she's not actually crying, and if her panties are wet, it's hard to tell. But then again, he doesn't have the big giant rock that he's promising her yet, either. So that matters.

'Um,' Frankie says, and all of Greg's surprisingly fragile ego hang in the balance. 'Um', a declaration of uncertainty, and it dangles over his head like a million pounds of fiery death, waiting to drop. He looks up into her face, and he almost thinks he sees, just for a second there, the thing he's been looking for all this time. The thing he sees in most girl's eyes when they look at him.

But then something incredible and amazing happens. It might not be much to a lot of people, that tiny little nod. But Greg?

Well, first of all, it takes him a minute to catch up with the reality of what his eyes are seeing. That is a nod, right? Boys, call it in -- can we confirm that this 'nodding' is a colloquial gesture of confirmation or affirmation? The reports come rolling in -- affirmative! -- and you can see him inflate, like that one simple nod turned on an air compressor attached to him somewhere discrete and uncomfortable.

A wordless, toneless yelping yowl of elation and celebration tears from him, ringing through probably the entire house like something out of a werewolf movie, and he leaps to his feet to prance around the bedroom in a happy celebration. It is not dignified. It is not manful. Is it cute?

Eye of the beholder.

After a longish moment, he winds down enough to run over to Frankie and sweep her up into his arms, kissing her like he's never kissed anyone or anything before. It is not known to Greg how this stacks up in the lady's experience.

The prancing about is cute. Which might be what saves him from turning around only to find her gone. While he's busy with his celebrating she steps all the way into the room, reaching for the door to pull it closed behind her, so that if there is anyone else in the trailer that they are about to hear what is going to come next.

He promised a shower before he had to go get crazy ...er and propose, so she's prepping for that shower. She reaches behind her, fingers unhooking the bra, sliding it off just in time for him to remember that she's part of his celebration. One hand is still behind her when he sweeps her up, a laugh falling from her lips before he kisses her, and she leans into the kiss with a sound that could only be described as happy. The hand not caught behind her reaches up, fingers spreading against his cheek, thumb bumping against his nose as she takes a step in closer to him, then onto his feet, thankfully she'd taken her shoes off, so that attempt at occupying the same space again doesn't come with too much uncomfortableness. Nevermind that he still has his shoes on, and that they are wet.

Kissing is a usual celebration, but so are other things. Like getting each other naked. Of course, that might also be for the primary objective of getting into the shower, will he ever really know why her hands drop to his jeans?